GMO 24- The Coalition- A Tale Of Prepper Survival (GMO 24- A Tale Of Prepper Survival Book 1) (4 page)

***

The front legs of the chair lifted off the ground as Jake leaned back. He rubbed his hands over the top of his hair, which was shaved down to nubs. His arms were tucked behind the chair’s back, exposing a thin but sturdy frame that was concealed underneath a black leather jacket along with the holster and pistol he kept with him at all times.

Gordon read over the notes from the soil sample that Sydney had typed up for him. The science was condensed to a language that a village idiot could understand. Gordon tossed the paper back onto the desk and rubbed his eyes.

“Fucking scientists. They’re all speculation,” Gordon said.

“Do you think it’s true?” Jake asked.

“All we know for sure is they found a patch of soil that will grow plants and that the soil came from Maine, specifically in the coastal region. But we have no idea who put it there or how the hell it made the trip from Maine all the way to bum-fucking-Egypt, Wyoming.”

“You want me to check it out?”

“I want you to find whoever did this,” Gordon said, picking up Sydney’s report. “I’ve had every single scientist we have working for us look at this sample and none of them, zero, nada, zilch, have any idea of how this soil suddenly rejuvenated to the point of supporting life.”

“Could get messy.”

Jake picked underneath his fingernails, flicking a speck of dirt onto the carpet. He inspected the rest of his short nails, running his thumb over the tops of them.

“That’s why I’m sending you,” Gordon said.

“When do you want me to leave?”

“Your plane takes off in thirty minutes.”

“Not much time to pack.”

Gordon extended Jake an envelope. “That’s the condensed version of Sydney’s report along with a profile of the closest community in proximity to where the sample was found. Sydney will be joining you on your trip in case you have any questions.”

Jake stuffed the envelope into the inside pocket of his jacket. “I’ll be in touch.” He made his way out of the office and glided down the hallway. He maneuvered through the groups of scientists and office personnel like a ghost. He seemed to be able to move through matter then disappear in the blink of an eye.

The shoulder holster concealed beneath his jacket contoured to the flow of his movements. It acted more like an extension of his body than an accessory. Every eye was on him as he exited the building. They knew who he was by reputation more than by name. The man with the black jacket was infamous.

Jake looked over the notes on the way to the airport. The car rumbled over the rough asphalt and swerved hastily, avoiding the potholes that plagued almost every road in the country. The last swerve caused Jake’s shoulder to slam against the door panel. His glare caught the eyes of the driver in the rearview mirror.

“Sorry,” the driver said.

The driver’s eyes fluttered back to the road, purposely avoiding Jake’s prolonged stare. Finally, Jake diverted his attention back to the papers.

Most of the science Jake read was beyond his high-school dropout academia, but whoever was behind this had been planning it for a very long time. The scout team that found the soil must have just stumbled upon a test sample. He didn’t doubt there was more out there.

The driver hit another pothole, sending Jake’s head into the ceiling from the bounce. Before Jake’s ass hit the seat, he had the barrel of his pistol against the back of the driver’s skull.

“Hit one more bump, and I’ll drive myself to the airport. Do you understand?” Jake asked.

“I’m sorry, sir. It’s just… the roads. They’re not very good anymore.”

Jake pushed the barrel of the gun harder into the driver’s skull. “I said, do you understand?”

“Yes. Yes, sir.”

Jake holstered his pistol and looked out the window. There must have been hundreds of potholes, divots, and cracks along the highway that the driver was anxiously and carefully trying to avoid. The chances of him making it the final three miles to the airport without hitting them were roughly one in one hundred thousand. Jake didn’t like the driver’s odds.

***

The sun was just breaking on the easterly horizon and casting a pale yellow across Alex’s face. The big orange ball pushed its way upward and was a welcome sight. Dawn was always his favorite part of the morning, even before the famine broke out.

The early-morning glow cast the rolling hills around him in a blanket of gold. For a moment he could see the dead earth around him be replaced by the fields of wheat and grass that used to grow there. The morning made the earth around him still feel youthful. But the feeling would only last for another few minutes. Then the sun would grow bolder, revealing the premature aged spots that now dotted the land around him. In another hour, he would be surrounded once again by death.

Alex rubbed his eyes. The morning sun also brought along with it the tiredness of his body. His legs and arms felt heavy, and the squinting against the sun’s rays only increased the desire to close his eyes. He reached around to his pack and pulled out a small plastic bag. White pills lined the clear bag, and he popped one in his mouth. He washed it down with a swig from his water bottle and splashed a little bit of water on his face.

It’d take a minute for the caffeine pill to take effect, but once it started working its magic, Alex would feel like he could walk all the way to the East Coast. He’d bought the pills right before news of the soil crisis. He bought it in bulk, and he still had half the container full back home. With coffee now considered a luxury item, his body was thankful for the purchase of the pills to help ease the addiction from the daily five cups of coffee he used to choke down.

Once the sun morphed from its infant morning orange to an adolescent white, Alex could see the shambled outline of Junction City in the distance. From there, he could find something to take him the rest of the way to Topeka.

Junction City had become a bit of a wheel hub for the rest of the state. The town was small enough for easy government control when the soil crisis started to gain momentum, but large enough to act as a refueling station for transportation vehicles heading out into the less populated areas of the state.

The soil crisis had brought an unintentional boom to the area, which now drew a large economic presence from the government because of their stake in the Soil Coalition. It also provided another service for anyone interested in dealing with the black market. There were certain government officials who didn’t shy away from gestures of bribes to peddle something, or someone, under the radar.

The smog from the traffic pollution grew thick as Alex made his way onto Highway 18, which held a deadheading straight into the city. He was stopped by a few sentries at the city’s entrance, but a flash of his hunting registration, along with a few ration cards attached, slid under their palms didn’t lead to any questions or further pat-downs.

Junction City may have been larger and slightly more chaotic than Alex’s community, but the look of the population was eerily similar. The thin frames had slightly more meat on them, but that same look of dazed hunger filled their eyes.

Of all the things that Alex had noticed since the soil crisis started, people’s eyes were the detail he fixated on the most. There was a journey, along with a tipping point, for someone starving to death, and you could always see where a person was by the state of their eyes.

In the beginning there was the panic, fear, frustration, and agitation that accompanied the desire to eat but not having the ability to find food. However, the will to survive was still clearly visible, along with the strength to obtain it, usually by force.

Once the hunger continued its vindictive pursuit in your consciousness, it would begin to cloud the mind. It was like a slow fog you could see coming, but no matter what you did, you couldn’t stop walking toward it. The misty, low-lying clouds covered you in a blanket of confusion. You wandered aimlessly through it, unable to make out any clear objects, and grasping violently at anything you could draw close.

The fog would thicken until the fear and apprehension of not being able to recognize anything gave way to numbness. The hunger would remain, but the desire to conquer it would be replaced by apathy. Apathy about continuing forward, apathy toward the people around you, apathy for the situation you found yourself in.

Finally, the struggle to continue the mindless wandering would end. The eyes would close, ending their torturous journey, and never open again.

Walking through Junction City, Alex saw more of the same. There wasn’t a single person alive in this country that wasn’t in one of the stages he’d categorized. Most of the people here still held onto their frustration and anger. Alex understood that anger. It kept you alive.

***

Sydney started feeling anxious the moment Gordon told him that he was going out into the field. At first he thought it was some sick joke, a continuation of the torture of being sent to the farm camp. But the moment he received the plane ticket, he knew it wasn’t some sort of psychological warfare. It was real. His leg bounced as uncontrollably as his ability to stop himself from hyperventilating. One of the pilots was making his way from the cockpit to the bathroom in the back, and Sydney flagged him down.

“Captain, can you tell me how long the flight is?”

“Shouldn’t be more than forty minutes. We’ll be taking off as soon as the other passenger arrives.”

Sydney wasn’t a field agent. That wasn’t his area of expertise. He belonged in the lab, analyzing the samples sent to him by more-qualified individuals. The field had too much uncertainty. Too many variables that he couldn’t control. And when there were too many uncertainties or too many variables, the higher the probability of chaos. Chaos was dangerous.

Sydney closed the small covering over the window and leaned his head back onto the headrest. He buckled his seatbelt and tightened the strap as hard as it would go around his waist. All he wanted to do was go there, take whatever notes he could, then get back to his lab. His safe, controlled, clean lab. The sooner all of this was over, the sooner he could get back to his bubble.

The airplane’s door was still open, and Sydney could hear the whine of the plane’s engine outside. The sunlight that flooded the cabin slowly became blocked by an encroaching shadow. With each step up the plane’s ladder, the figure’s shadow grew.

Sydney slid down in his seat, trying to hide from whatever was coming. Gordon had mentioned that someone would be coming with him. He figured it was another scientist, but it wouldn’t make sense to send two lab techs into the field.

The cabin was completely dark now as a man carrying no luggage stepped onto the plane. The only things he had were the clothes on his back. A pair of jeans and a black leather jacket.

Alex stepped out of the truck rig and tossed up three MRE packages to the driver. The trucker nodded, and the rig jolted forward as the trucker shifted gears. A cloud of black smoke flew up into the air and disappeared down the road.

Topeka was just ahead of him, and surrounding the edges of the city were the steel death traps of farm camps. The sentries in charge of running them worked the people inside eighteen hours a day, and sometimes they went days without offering the workers food or water. The only amenity of civilization they offered was a latrine used by the workers for their unfortunate bodily functions.

Meeko was in one of those boxes, slowly wasting away, being whipped if he was working too slowly. The farm camps were full of kids like him. Orphans with no parents. They were easy pickings, and when they dropped dead from exhaustion, starvation, or dehydration, they were easily disposed of.

Alex followed the road until it ran right past the city hall where the Soil Coalition headquarters resided. Alex remembered first hearing about the Coalition almost a year ago. It had an allure and a name the citizens of the country could rally behind. It was the perfect propaganda to give the government enough time to organize the remainder of their resources and recruit what bright minds and strong muscles remained of everyone else.

The Soil Coalition emitted a false sense of hope, one that people still clung to till this day. The early messages of returning to prosperity and bringing peace and rest to a torn country were words everyone wanted to hear. But as Alex looked at the sentries with assault rifles lining the steps of their headquarters, peace seemed to be the lowest objective on their totem pole.

Unlike the corrupt sentries at Junction City, the sentries that Alex would be searched by here shared the same mechanical efficiency of the sentries in his own community. Once his pack was handed over to them, he braced himself for when they found the seeds. The sentry who pulled them out flipped them over in his hand a few times.

“What are these?” the sentry asked.

The sentry had a wide face, almost as if someone pushed the front and back of his skull together, and that turned his head into more of an oval.

“Seeds,” Alex answered.

“What?”

“They’re seeds, dumbass.”

Alex wasn’t sure if it was his salty language or the fact that he was in possession of unregistered seeds that caused the bum rush of sentries slamming his face onto the hard city hall tile, but regardless of the reason it still hurt.

The bash to the side of his face didn’t help the still-present head pain from last night. He could feel the side of his face swelling, and the addition of his wrists being handcuffed only furthered his discomfort.

Once Gordon heard that someone had seeds and discovered exactly who it was, Alex knew he’d get the audience he desired. He just hoped his bargaining chips were worth the freedom of two farm workers.